Saved by a Seal 3/3
The final part of the fortieth tale from The Animal Book
I let my feet down, down, until my toes at last touched the sand. I dug them in with all my might and battled desperately to keep my footing. Then came a little swell that lifted me from my feet, and the terrible current swooped me back again. My strength was gone, and I turned on my back to float.
“Perhaps I can try again if I rest,” I thought, and meanwhile I drifted out until the roar of the breakers came but dully to my ears—out where the water was deep and green. Realizing that I paid for every minute of rest by drifting farther from shore, I rolled wearily over and with slow strokes started back.
At this moment Nab stuck his nose from the water not three feet away. When I spoke his name, he came up so that I could put my hand on his neck. For half a minute he was quiet, letting me bear my weight upon him; then he showed by beginning to dive and circle that his motive in coming to me was purely for sport. Every other minute he would shake loose from my hand and then peer at me beneath the water as my head sank under.
At last I got such a firm grip on the nape of his neck that I could hold on even when he dived. With my other hand I untied the piece of lasso from round me and tried to put the noose over Nab’s head. To this he had objections, and he ducked and backed and splashed until I nearly strangled. Forced to give up this scheme, I nevertheless succeeded in getting a cinch round one of his hind flippers close up to the body.
“March, Nab!” I then shouted. “Forward, march!”
He either had forgotten his lessons or exulted in the fact that he was now at liberty to disobey orders, for instead of heading for shore, he started in the opposite direction.
“Haw!” I cried. “Haw! Gee, then, gee!” But Nab would turn neither to right nor left, and he dragged me farther out to sea.
Thinking I might steer him by his flipper, I gave a jerk on the lariat. What the seal thought I don’t know, but when he felt the noose tighten he seemed filled with sudden fright and plunged into the depths. Instinctively, I took a big breath when I saw him disappear, and I laid hold of the lasso with both hands. In another instant I was making the longest dive under water that I believe man ever took.
It might have been pleasing to glide through the depths under other circumstances and at moderate speed, but following down after this uncertain guide at the rushing pace he set was the worst experience I ever had. I should have let go my hold but for the thought that there was no worse place than that from which I had started.
I hung on and on, even after it seemed I should burst for want of air. Then came a shiver along the lariat and the sensation in my body of scraping against a rock. Although I still held on tightly, my speed suddenly slackened, and I knew the old lasso had been cut in two on the rock.
Half-strangled though I was, I began pawing my way to the surface. When at last my head broke through into the air, I hung to the rock, sputtering and gasping. I didn’t attempt to do more than get my breath for, I think, a quarter of an hour, but at last I looked round to see where I was.
At first I could not make it out, for Moss Beach was nowhere in sight. Then, when I saw a couple of huge pelicans perched on the rock above my head, the truth came to me. Nab had taken me out clear round the point and over to Seal Rocks—the island home of seals and pelicans. How I ever could have taken such a dive and come out alive is still a mystery to me, except when I remember how the water churned in my ears at our terrific speed.
The rock upon which I hung had been Nab’s birthplace, and the place where he had been captured by Father and me. Here he used to lie to toast in the sun, and here also he had fled when he felt my line round his flipper.
As soon as I could clear the salt water from my mouth and lungs I began to work my way up on the rock. Exhausted as I was, and benumbed with cold, this was no easy matter. Once, when a fragment of rock gave way beneath my fingers, I nearly slipped back into the water. But at last I crawled up far enough to send off the pelicans in fright, and to get where the sun would strike me. I expected to blister my back, but I thought it would be a welcome change from the freezing process.
After the blood had begun to warm up a little in my veins, I began to think of getting back to the mainland. It was a distance of only a hundred yards from the rock across, but when I looked down into that green water and recalled my recent experiences I shrank from sliding in as from death itself. I measured the distance twenty times with my eyes, and the same number of times assured myself that there would be no undertow here with the tide coming in, but I could not bring myself to let go the rocks that felt so firm and good.
When I observed, however, that it was nearly high tide, and that I should have to swim against the tide if I waited much longer, I climbed down without more fooling and struck back for shore. Although a side current shifted me from my direct course so that I had to land upon another beach than I had intended, I got ashore without difficulty and hastened across the point to Moss Beach, where I had left my clothes.
I never again attempted to recapture Nab, nor have I had an opportunity to repay him for towing me to Seal Rocks, but I have seen him a number of times since and have often heard his happy bark from the rocks along the coast.
The End